While Chicago’s mean streets continue to get meaner—there were 82 shootings in the city over the Independence Day weekend, resulting in 14 deaths—there is a ray of hope as lawful citizens are beginning to prepare to fight back.
A report over the weekend in the Chicago Sun-Times shows that since right-to-carry was passed in Illinois two years ago, many residents of the inner city have received carry permits. And the neighborhood where Otis McDonald, the African-American plaintiff in the groundbreaking McDonald v. Chicago case, lived before passing away last year ranks 23rd in permits, out of more than 1,300 zip codes in the state.
McDonald had seen his historically peaceful neighborhood being ruined by gangs and gang violence, and fought hard for the right of Chicagoans to be able to protect themselves from such violence. Since 2013, when the concealed-carry legislation passed, Illinois has issued nearly 120,000 permits.
